Monday, December 25, 2017

Collusion between media and government is common in Mexico, payoffs so accepted that some reporters are listed as government contractors. Co-opting of media is normal in third world countries but is most serious in Mexico. Two thirds of reporters self-censor-NY Times, 12/25/17

President
Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration has spent hundreds of millions of
dollars a year in government money on advertising, creating what many
Mexican media owners, executives and journalists call a presidential
branding juggernaut capable of suppressing investigative articles,
directing front pages and intimidating newsrooms that challenge it.

Leaders
from all parties marshal hundreds of millions of dollars in state money
for advertising each year, money they dole out to favored news outlets,
Fundar calculated. According to the executives and editors involved in
the negotiations, some government press secretaries openly demand
positive coverage from news organizations before signing an advertising
contract.

The
result is a media landscape across Mexico in which federal and state
officials routinely dictate the news, telling outlets what they should —
and should not — report, according to dozens of interviews with
executives, editors and reporters. Hard-hitting stories are often
softened, squashed or put off indefinitely, if they get reported at all.
Two-thirds of Mexican journalists admit to censoring themselves.

“If
a professional reporter wants to cover the dirty elements of what is
happening in the country today, neither the government nor private
companies will give them a penny,” said Enrique Krauze, a historian who
edits Letras Libres, a Mexican magazine that receives some government
money. “This is one of the biggest flaws in Mexican democracy.”

Mr.
Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, also known as the PRI,
pioneered this system during its 70 years in power. Former President
José López Portillo explicitly laid out the government’s expectations
decades ago — he was even quoted as saying that he did not pay the media
to attack him — and the practice continued when the opposition claimed
the presidency in 2000, then again in 2006.

But
the government’s influence over the media goes well beyond the
advertising spigot, with officials sometimes resorting to outright
bribery. In Chihuahua, the former governor spent more than $50 million
on publicity, officials say, in a state saddled with huge public debts.
Yet that was just the official figure.

Reliance on Public Advertising

Pick
up a newspaper, tune into a radio station or flip on the television in
Mexico and you are greeted with a barrage of government advertising. In
some papers, nearly every other page is claimed by an ad promoting one
government agency or another. At times, as much airtime is dedicated to
venerating the government’s work as it is to covering the news.

The
extraordinary spending comes at a time when the Mexican government is
cutting budgets across the board, including for health, education and
social services. The federal government spent as much on advertising
last year, about $500 million, as it did to support students in its main
scholarship program for public universities.

The
co-opting of the news media is more fundamental than any one
administration’s spending on self-promotion, historians say. It reflects
the absence of the basic pact that a free press has with its readers in
a democracy, where holding the powerful accountable is part of its
mission.

“It’s
a common problem in the developing world, but the problem is much, much
graver in Mexico,” said David Kaye, the United Nations special
representative for freedom of expression. “It’s remarkable what the
government spends.”

Most
news outlets have relied on public advertising for so long that they
would not survive without the government, giving officials tremendous
leverage to push for certain stories and prevent others, analysts,
reporters and media owners say.

Guerrero, Bloomberg

“This
is an economic problem,” said Carlos Puig, a columnist at the newspaper
Milenio, which receives substantial government funding. “The classic
American model does not exist here.”

Last
year, a public outcry erupted after a top official in the Peña Nieto
administration went to Milenio’s offices to complain about a story. The
article, criticizing a national anti-hunger initiative, was taken down
from the newspaper’s website right after the visit.

The
piece later went back up, with a far less damning headline. The
newspaper says the reason was simple: The article was “deplorable,” an
inaccurate and “vulgar” attempt to smear an official, requiring an
apology to readers. But journalists and democracy advocates, citing the
power of government advertising, cried foul and the reporter resigned in
protest, claiming to have been censored. Eventually, the original
headline was restored.

Overt government interference is often unnecessary. Sixty-eight percent of journalists in Mexico said they censored themselves, not only to avoid being killed,
but also because of pressure from advertisers and the impact on the
company’s bottom line, according to a three-year study by Mexican and
American academics.

Francisco
Pazos did. He worked for years at one of the largest papers in Mexico,
Excélsior. One of his most frustrating moments came in late 2013, he
said, when the government was in the throes of a fight with commuters
over a transit fare increase.

Mr.
Pazos said he tried to explore the commuters’ anger in detail, until an
editor stopped him, telling him the paper was no longer going to cover
the controversy.

“I
came to understand there were issues I simply couldn’t cover,” Mr.
Pazos said. “And eventually, I stopped looking for those kinds of
stories. Eventually, you become a part of the censorship yourself.”

Many
media owners and directors say they have so few independent sources of
income outside the government that they face a stark choice: wither from
a lack of resources, or survive as accomplices to their own
manipulation.

“Of
course, the use of public money limits freedom of expression, but
without this public money there would be no media in Mexico at all,”
said Marco Levario, the director of the magazine Etcétera. “We are all
complicit in this.”

The
model means that some media outlets in Mexico can scarcely afford their
own principles. Twenty years ago, the newspaper La Jornada was one of
the most beloved in the nation, a critical voice and a must-read for
intellectuals and activists who carried the tabloid around town, tucked
under their arms.

But
the years have not been kind to the paper. A few years ago, it was on
the cusp of financial ruin. Then the government intervened, rescuing the
publication with more than $1 million in official advertising and,
critics say, claiming its editorial independence in the process.

“Now they own them,” Mr. Levario said. “The paper has been like a spokesman for the president.”

Other
business ties link news outlets to the government. Many media companies
are part of larger conglomerates that build roads or other public
projects. The same person who owns Grupo Imagen, which includes radio,
television and print media, also owns a major construction firm,
Prodemex. It has earned more than $200 million in the past five years
building government facilities, and will play a role in the construction
of the new Mexico City airport.

The
nation’s Supreme Court recently took up the issue of official
advertising, ruling in November that the government must act on the
president’s promise to regulate the flow of public money in an unbiased
way.

“The
absence of regulation in official publicity allows for the arbitrary
use of communications budgets, which restricts indirectly freedom of
expression,” said Arturo Zaldívar, a Supreme Court justice.

In
a statement, the president’s office referred to its official
advertising as a form of constitutionally backed publicity that enables
it to inform and educate the public about its work. But it rejects the
assertion that such spending skews the media’s coverage of important
issues or stifles free speech in any way.

“Every
day journalists in Mexico question, with absolute freedom, the
government’s actions and those of our representatives, including the
president,” it said. “There is a permanent criticism from Mexican
journalists toward the government. Just by opening any newspaper,
turning on the television and going to social media, you can verify
this.”

When
he came to office in 2012, the president vowed to more fairly
distribute the government’s advertising dollars. Shortly after his
election, Mr. Peña Nieto’s team came up with a plan to regulate media
spending, according to three people familiar with the proposal.

But
Aurelio Nuño, the president’s former chief of staff, said the effort
never got far enough to produce a draft of any legislation that could
yield action. The effort was subsumed by other campaign promises and
left behind, he said.

‘Heating Them Up’

As
the editor for recruiting at the newspaper Reforma, Diana Alvarez has
grown accustomed to the flexible definition of journalismin Mexico.

A
few years back, she said, she interviewed one young woman from a large
paper in Mexico City. The woman, who had a master’s degree in
journalism, said her job at the paper consisted of creating files of
negative press clippings on governors across the country.

Mrs.
Alvarez rattled off more examples. One applicant, an editing candidate,
boasted that he knew how to work his relationships with politicians to
score more advertising money.

He
called it “heating them up,” which involved showing the target a
critical story that his newspaper was planning to publish. Then, as he
explained to Mrs. Alvarez, an advertising contract with his paper would
help “put out the fire.”

Yet
another applicant, a former state government employee, said he knew how
to “deal with the press,” Mrs. Alvarez recalled. He told her how he had
been in charge of distributing envelopes filled with cash for reporters
as bribes.

“I
wish I could say these are isolated cases, or just a few, but it isn’t
the case,” Mrs. Alvarez said. “There have been many like these, where
they come and speak about these practices in a way that makes you
realize they have normalized them.”

Daniel
Moreno, the director of the digital publication Animal Político, says
he receives almost nothing from the federal government, and relatively
small amounts from state governors.

It’s
not because he doesn’t want the money, Mr. Moreno says. It’s just that
the kind of critical coverage his news team does is not rewarded with
government contracts, he contends.

Recently,
Mr. Moreno said he received a call from officials in the state of
Morelos, which spends about $3,000 a month with him on advertising. The
governor’s wife was going through a rough period over claims that she
was politicizing aid for earthquake victims — an accusation she rejected
— so a state official suggested that Animal Político do a few positive
stories on her.

Mr. Moreno politely declined.

“They were pretty offended,” he said with a shrug. “And I’m pretty sure that money is gone.”

Still,
that was better than it is with most states, Mr. Moreno said. As a
policy, Animal Político publishes a banner on pieces that are paid
advertising, so readers know the work is not independent journalism, he
said.

But
officials in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Sonora have refused to
pay for content unless it is published without the banner, he said. Mr.
Moreno refused.

“I’ve lost more money than I’ve earned that way,” he said with a laugh.

This month, news organizations came together to denounce the violence against the press in Mexico, where the murders of journalists hit a record this year. Thirty-nine media groups signed on.

But
a few, including Animal Político, were missing--on purpose.

They had
insisted on some extra lines in the announcement about the damage that
official publicity does to free speech.

A small uproar ensued, they said. Some large newspapers that rely heavily on government money objected.

Ultimately,
the letter was sent without the lines — and without the signature of
Mr. Moreno and his compatriots. The news media, it appeared, would not
challenge its livelihood.

An Exposé Raises Questions

On
Aug. 23, Ricardo Anaya, the president of the opposition National Action
Party and now a candidate for president in next year’s election, woke
up to find his name and family splashed across the front page of El
Universal, a major newspaper.

The
story went into details about his father-in-law’s real estate empire
and, more pointedly, the ways in which Mr. Anaya’s political career had
helped propel that fortune.

The
narrative was a familiar one in Mexico: A political leader had used his
influence to enrich himself and his family. El Universal laid out the
addresses and values of the various properties, and even published head
shots of his entire extended family, 14 people in all. News outlets
across the country carried the story.

The
only thing missing, a court ultimately decided, was accuracy. Mr. Anaya
managed to show that much of the information was flawed, skewed or
simply wrong. While his in-laws clearly owned a number of properties,
many had been in their possession before his political career began,
public deeds showed.

Even
more puzzling, Mr. Anaya said, were the photographs of his family. They
had not been public before, as far as the family knew. In fact, they
looked an awful lot like passport pictures.

Given
that such photos were held by the foreign ministry, which issues
passports, Mr. Anaya suspected that his rivals in the government had
leaked the pictures to the newspaper.

Mr.
Anaya filed suit. In October, the court found that El Universal had
misrepresented his in-laws’ wealth and wrongly accused Mr. Anaya of
using his office to benefit them.

El
Universal claimed that it was entitled to publish the story under the
right to freedom of expression, an argument the judge questioned because
the paper “had not based its investigation in facts.” The newspaper has
appealed the court’s decision.

The case raises national questions of trust in a country where the news media receives so much money in government advertising.

El
Universal receives more government advertising than any other newspaper
in the nation, about $10 million last year, Fundar found. Critics argue
that the newspaper has become something of an attack dog for the
government ahead of presidential elections next year.

The
suggestion is “false and offensive,” the newspaper says. Government
advertising “does not affect in any way the editorial line of the
newspaper,” it says, adding that “thinkers of all political parties” are
represented in its pages.

Not
all its journalists agree. In July, a half-dozen columnists announced
their resignations in protest over what they called biased coverage,
saying the owners had destroyed the institution’s credibility.

Salvador
Frausto, an investigative editor who earned the paper many awards, also
left. Colleagues said he was clearly uncomfortable with how close the
paper was becoming to the PRI and its new presidential candidate, José
Antonio Meade.

The
person who replaced Mr. Frausto as the new investigative editor was
most recently a press officer at the foreign affairs ministry, according
to his LinkedIn profile.

And
the news director of El Universal had close ties with the new
candidate: His wife was Mr. Meade’s international press chief at the
finance ministry.

The paper says that there is no conflict of interest, and that it does not tolerate biased coverage of any kind.

“The
reason I resigned is because I no longer felt like I was guaranteed a
free space,” Andrés Lajous, now a doctoral student at Princeton
University, wrote in an article recounting the events.

‘It Was the Feds’

Witnesses were calling it an execution.

In
January 2015, Laura Castellanos, an award-winning reporter, was sent by
editors at El Universal to cover a pair of shootouts involving the
federal police.

At
the time, self-defense groups had taken up arms to fight against
organized crime, and Ms. Castellanos, who had written extensively on the
subject, was considered an expert.

She
spent 10 days reporting the story, tapping old sources and interviewing
witnesses in the state of Michoacán, where 16 had been killed and
dozens wounded.

The
issue was especially delicate because a close ally of the president,
Alfredo Castillo, who had been appointed to oversee the security
situation in Michoacán, claimed that the deaths came from a shootout
with armed assailants.

Ms.
Castellanos said she recorded interviews with 39 people — victims,
bystanders, hospital workers — and came to a different conclusion. The
federal police had summarily executed unarmed suspects, including some
as they surrendered on their kneeswith their arms in the air, she said
her reporting showed.

After days of editing and fact-checking, she said the story was ready to run. Only it didn’t.

Ms.
Castellanos and her editors were not surprised. Mr. Peña Nieto was
already under heavy public pressure for his handling of the
disappearance of 43 college students, as well as his wife’s purchase of a
multimillion-dollar home from a major government contractor.

But
after two and a half months--during which time one of her sources was
tortured and killed, she said--Ms. Castellanos worried her story would
never run.

Working
with lawyers, she said she discovered a loophole in her contract--one
that allowed her to publish the material elsewhere.

One
of the few publications willing to take the story was a new website
founded by Carmen Aristegui, another award-winning reporter, who had
lost her radio station job after breaking the story about the
president’s wife.

But
the morning the Michoacán story was scheduled to publish, under the
headline “It Was the Feds,” Ms. Aristegui’s website went dark.

Eventually, they figured out what happened: The website had been hacked.

The two eventually published the story, but the case again raised questions about independence in a country awash in government advertising.

Neither
the killings, nor the hacking, have been fully resolved. El Universal
said it had not published Ms. Castellanos’s story because it did not
meet the newspaper’s standards.

The
next year, Ms. Castellano’s article was awarded Mexico’s most coveted
journalistic prize: the national award for investigative reporting."

"A version of this article appears in print on December 25, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Mexico Spends Big on Ads To Tame the News Media."